Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday August 28, 2012 @05:40PM
from the yep-we're-going-there dept.

ananyo writes "On 27 August, a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes for the first time that, overall, boys will be healthier if circumcised. The report says that although the choice is ultimately up to parents, medical insurance should pay for the procedure. The recommendation, coming from such an influential body, could boost U.S. circumcision rates, which, at 55%, are already higher than much of the developed world. The researchers estimate that each circumcision that is not performed costs the U.S. health-care system $313."

To cover that we could of course put the federal income tax up on the average income from 23% to 40% (while ignoring the laffer curve). Yeah I'm sure everyone would love that. Use your head. Yes the defense budget is bloated and out of control, but damn it, so is everything else!

Not really. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], 30-50% sounds around right for a first-world country. Advanced civilization is expensive to maintain, and trying to cut corners - for example by cutting social security - tends to increase costs elsewhere more (you need more internal security to keep the people who have nothing to lose but their chains from revolting). The laternative is to descend to third world status, which is unlikely to result in people having more disposable income.

Perhaps you should think of the society in terms of a corporation: a company which pays most of its profits to its shareholders rather than investing them will be utterly crushed by its competitors and deliver far less value in the long run.

We were made this way for very good reasons, even if we don't understand them.Imagine if somebody proposed the same thing for female infants. What would be the reaction?Leave all minors alone. Let them decide when they turn 18.

We were made this way for very good reasons, even if we don't understand them.Imagine if somebody proposed the same thing for female infants. What would be the reaction?Leave all minors alone. Let them decide when they turn 18.

Paid for by the "Protect the Appendix" campaign.Also; evolution doesn't make anything; it just ends up in some not-too-harmful-before-reproductive-age way after lots of mutations.Not advocating circumcission, just saying that medical decission should be based on reality, not assumption or belief.

Educate yourself: the appendix serves as a haven for useful bacteria [wikipedia.org] when illness flushes those bacteria from the rest of the intestines, and thereby helps maintain normal intestinal flora.

Tonsils are not necessary part of the body either. Neither is the gall bladder. Hell, you can go on quite fine with one lung and no stomach either.

That do NOT mean you remove things.

Hell, you can cut transmission of STDs by just cutting everyone's dicks off. They are 100% not necessary for anything. We can bypass natural insemination with a syringe and tube, you know, like cattle and other farm animals. Would you pay the price??

The recommendations are retarded. 1 in 1,000,000 vs. 3 in 1,000,000 chance of cancer. They are saying uncircumcised result in $300+ extra costs per person, that means each penile cancer costs $150,000,000 dollars in costs. I'm sorry, but someone can't count. Or maybe they hope no one else does either.

Except circumcision reduces pleasure during sex. It's a stupid religious practice, that people justify as meaning to reduce infection, but it's actually targeted at reducing pleasure and masturbation (I've heard it fails drastically at that). I live in Argentina. Do you know what babies get circumcisions here? None. Well, just the jews, and not all of them, only the actually religious.

It's an awful and stupid religious practice, and should be BANNED. Parents that do it should be punished with actual jail time. Let the kid decide if he wants to mutilate himself when he turns 18. Same should go for religion (no sex before 18? Fine. No voting? Fine. No religious teaching until 18 years old. Also, punishable with mandatory jail time).

Can't agree more. Never understood why parents feel the need to disfigure their children with no input from the child is beyond me. This should be something that an adult decides for his own reasons, not something to be decided for him.

I'll add to your post, as the context wouldn't mean much on other posts. Maybe it'll calm some other people's thoughts too.

UK born and bred, no religion apart from the FSM.

Cut at 19, a few years after I started my sex life, solely for the reason of my foreskin being too tight [for my enormous...]. Simple operation. In and out in an hour. I walked to a friend's house in the evening. 32 stitches. Back to work a week later, and it could have been earlier but hey, I was being paid whether I went in or not. No wanking for three weeks. Can you imagine that at 19?!?

Before and after? Obviously better after because that's why I had the operation, but in truth, no real difference. No problems with soreness, dryness, or sensitivety; maybe a little bit more sensitive, and that's a good thing.

The wife, although I didn't meet her until a couple of years later, prefers the look. She says it looks like a mini erect penis.

Friends? It's amazing how many blokes in the UK have had it done when someone admits to it. 50% in my circle of friends, all done because of tightness. Half of those performed in adulthood.

The worst part? In hospital I had a group of students watching the examination. Standing there with my trollies round my ankles being told to pull the foreskin back infront of everyone was not pleasant. The surgeon pointing at my foreskin with his pen, telling all the crowd he'd cut just below the tight point was not something I'd want to repeat ever. I still imagine the students writting reports on the operation and that report still sitting on a hard drive somewhere.

Speaking as a circumcised male, I have never felt a loss for a bit of useless skin.

Meh. I know a girl missing her 4th toe on one foot that says the same thing. The fact that you don't miss it doesn't mean we should go around cutting them off.

Most of the women I've talked to about it say they find foreskins to be "ooky" anyways, particularly the ones that enjoy fellatio.

And that constitutes a reason to remove it on all infants across the board? That some girls who sucked a bunch of dicks, who probably got used to circumcised dicks then later found an uncircumcised one's foreskin a bit "ooky". It boggles the mind. You know, some of them find the loose skin around your testicles a bit ooky too...

If you want a circumcision go for it. As far as I'm concerned its in the same arena as nipple piercing and what not. Your body, your choice.

But to make it a mandated medical procedure based on this is insanity.

The rationale they are using for this procedure is roughly on par with extracting your teeth because brushing them and flossing them and caring for them is a lot of work. They get infected a need all kinds of expensive attention if you don't keep them clean... and sometimes even if you do they still break sometimes or come out crooked. What an expensive mess... for something we don't need. All our nutrition requirements can be met by food in pill and shake form anyways.

And besides some guys who got used to having their dicks sucked and gummed on by toothless whores find chicks with teeth... ooky.

I am also skeptical, though I'm not sure about claiming natural = good. First of all, a savings of US$313 over the life of the patient is trivial given the current US health care system. Really really trivial - I hope they factored the cost of getting the circumcision into that, because that procedure alone is likely to cost double that amount.

Second, they're citing the African trials again as evidence for this, which... Why would they do that? Those trials took place in some of the poorest parts of Africa, they say nothing about efficacy of circumcision in places were soap is abundant. If there's so much debate around this issue, why don't they just do some trials here in the US?

All right, I skimmed the article and replied in haste so let me correct myself: the cost of getting the circumcision is indeed factored into the $313 cost, and more than that, that cost is averaged over the entire population. So the real cost would be nothing for most people and extremely high for those people who got HIV or some other serious venereal disease or urinary tract infection.

The actual AAP report also doesn't focus as much on the African trails as the Nature article suggests, what they're really saying is that the cost of getting the circumcision and treating the nominal complications that arise from it is small enough that we should make sure that the option is available (i.e.: not prohibited) even if the benefits are dubious. They also mention some speculative reasons why removing the foreskin may help with infection - the inner surface is thin and susceptible to micro tears, etc. I still think they should do some real trails here before they make recommendations for here, but this is certainly a more reasonable position.

I personally don't think circumcision is something that should be done to a child who can't fight back, especially since most of the problems that it supposedly helps with don't come up until you're sexually active anyway, but I do recognize that using a condom is much easier for a circumcised person than it is for someone with a foreskin.

Not only that, from what I can tell the African trials were an exercise in how not to conduct a reliable scientific study [ox.ac.uk] and it's a mystery that everyone takes them so seriously. Some of the screw-ups were pretty spectacular - the circumcised group had additional counselling on condom use and safe sex compared to the control and weren't allowed or able to have sex for a relatively large proportion of the study period. Others were more subtle. For instance, they terminated the trial early and circumcised the control group, supposedly because the benefits were so great that they couldn't ethically leave, and this kind of early termination has been shown to cause researchers to find effects that did not in reality actually exist in trials like this one.

They also noticed that the rate of HIV infection amongst the members of the study decreased after the end of the trial and somehow concluded that this was the result of circumcision somehow becoming more effective over time, despite the fact that this could just as easily be caused by (for instance) their exposure decreasing as they got older for unrelated reasons and the lack of a plausible mechanism through which this would happen. They then extrapolated out this decrease into the future and quoted this extrapolated figure prominently as evidence of the effectiveness of circumcision. That prominent journals and institutions were willing to buy into this is truely bizarre.

So I take it you're going to have a proactive surgery to remove your prostate? After all, prostate cancer is one of the biggest killers of men in North America, and nobody really needs it... it just gives your sperm an advantage (just like your foreskin).

While you're at it, why not permanently remove all hair from your body, as a way to reduce the formation of cysts? You could also remove all your teeth, as we don't need to masticate our food these days, we've got machines that can do that for us. Removal of teeth will reduce gum disease, thereby possibly reducing arterial and coronary illnesses.

Sure, there's reason to remove parts of the body, but the appendix has a useful purpose, as does the gall bladder, the prostate, the teeth and the foreskin. Pre-emptively removing something from someone else that can't be put back seems a bit extreme when lifestyle choices (yes, even the ones you make for your children) have a much larger effect on health.

This whole thing is transparent as fuck if you ask me. Doctors get money, religious peeps feel better about forcing this on babies instead of making it a voluntary thing. And of course, the people who have no way to get their foreskin back either way rationalize it.

Is that over the price of doing the surgery?Because from what I could find, it's in the 2-3k range; so if you have to pay $2000 to save $313, that might not be the best idea.

If you're paying 2 to 3 K, you're probably doing it wrong.

A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement. (John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., "Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects," Plain Fact for Old and Young. Burlington, Iowa: F. Segner & Co. (1888). P. 295) http://www.cirp.org/pages/whycirc.html [cirp.org]

What's the going price of carbolic acid (phenol) these days? ~ $10. And mind you, this added cost is only for females. For males, if you forego anesthesia and all the hassles that come with it, you could probably get a normal Barber to do it for only twice his going rate.

Guess what. I bet that if you cut your son's penis completely, the risk that they contract HIV or any other disease will drop by a great percentage. More, I absolutely guarantee you, that if you cut your son's penis today, we will not have penile cancer, ever! Guaranteed or your money back!

...is that they harp on the issues of UTIs and STDs/STIs. Those are things that are easily avoidable, and not at all the fault of having a foreskin. If baby gets a UTI, mommy and daddy need to do a better job cleaning baby up and cleaning baby sooner. If, as a man, the person has issues with STDs/STIs, well gee stop being a moron having unprotected/risky sex Einstein.

Trying to lump the added medical costs is the same. The costs brought on are not due to the foreskin, they are due to the creators of the baby, and/or the owner of the penis.

You're forgetting to point out the insignificance of the numbers in question. For UTI, if it's a 90% reduction, well, take the existing incidence rate, 1.5%, add 90%, and it's still less than 3%. And how many babies die from UTI? We're talking/infection/ here of a routine infant condition, not mortality.

It makes me want to throw up.

Then I watch how people react to allowing US hospitals to perform the "clitoral pin-prick" style female circumcision which fulfills certain religious beliefs. Nothing is removed. Read my other comments, and I would gladly trade 10 years of physical pain (possibly) due to a circumcision a bit too tight for a pin-prick. People lose their shit. Really, I had a comment removed from NPR.org just for mentioning that hospitals (and the AAP) had considered creating a protocol for this pin-prick.

If I can be 100% serious for a moment, think about it. Girls every year are trafficked to 3rd world countries to be mutilated. US hospitals are offering to do something that will be done anyway in a less severe, much more sterile manner. And people still lose their shit. So, the girls continue to get trafficked to 3rd world countries to have their clitorises pricked with a bacteria-infested knife, resulting in irritation that requires amputation of the entire clitoris. BUT OMG FGM BRAIN LEAKS OUT EAR. But male circumcision, ok, that's cool.

Penile cancer is so rare that the risk is practically insignifigant. Urinary tract infections are not as common in men (unless there is a disease/disability that interferes with normal urination) because our urethras are so long.
Circumcision should be outright banned except in cases where it is 100% medically necessary.

I'm not American, and I can't quite understand where does the custom in the US comes from. Is it religious in origin? I know muslims, jews and americans practice it, but that's about it. Does anyone know?
As far as I know, it's not common at all on other countries.

I'm not American, and I can't quite understand where does the custom in the US comes from. Is it religious in origin? I know muslims, jews and americans practice it, but that's about it. Does anyone know?
As far as I know, it's not common at all on other countries.

Yea, that's how we distinguish ourselves from you unwashed heathens*.

* in before the negative mods - That's called a JOKE, you humorless assholes!

More or less. Several prominent advocates of circumcision, such as John Harvey Kellog, liked the idea that it would reduce masturbation (especially if the pain was remembered!).

The medical benefits are dubious, particularly as there are indications that any reduction in male infection rates are outweighed by increased rates of female infection rates. Either way condoms and HPV vaccinations are far, far, far, far more effective and appropriate.

So, I would masturbate even more if I hadn't been circumcised? Is this even possible?!

Probably not, but you might enjoy it more.

From the article

There is fair evidence from a cross-sectional study of Korean men of decreased masturbatory pleasure after adult circumcision

Or as they say in the referenced article

There were no differences in sexual drive, erection and ejaculation, but circumcised men reported decreased masturbatory pleasure and sexual enjoyment. We conclude that adult circumcision adversely affects sexual function in a signicant number of men, possibly because of loss of nerve endings.

I'm not American, and I can't quite understand where does the custom in the US comes from. Is it religious in origin? I know muslims, jews and americans practice it, but that's about it. Does anyone know?

Routine circumcision as a preventative or cure for masturbation was proposed in Victorian times in America. Masturbation was thought to be the cause of a number of diseases. The procedure of routine circumcision became commonplace between 1870 and 1920, and it consequently spread to all the English-speaking countries (England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). None of these countries now circumcise the majority of their male children, a distinction reserved today for the United States (in the UK, in fact, nonreligious circumcision has virtually ceased). Yet, there are still those who promote this social surgery, long after the masturbation hysteria of the past century has subsided.

Dr. E.J. Spratling, who promoted this surgery by telling his colleagues that "...circumcision is undoubtedly the physician's closest friend and ally..." prescribed in 1895 the method of circumcision as it is practiced in hospitals today.

"To obtain the best results one must cut away enough skin and mucous membrane to rather put it on the stretch when erections come later. There must be no play in the skin after the wound has thoroughly healed, but it must fit tightly over the penis, for should there be any play the patient will be found to readily resume his practice not begrudging the time and extra energy required to produce the orgasm... We may not be sure that we have done away with the possibility of masturbation, but we may feel confident that we have limited it to within the danger lines."(E.J. Spratling, MD. Medical Record, Masturbation in the Adult, vol. 48, no. 13, September 28, 1895, pp. 442-443.)

Here is an example of what another sexaphobic American doctor had to say about masturbation in 1903:

"It (self abuse) lays the foundation for consumption, paralysis and heart disease. It weakens the memory, makes a boy careless, negligent and listless. It even makes many lose their minds; others, when grown, commit suicide.... Don't think it does no harm to your boy because he does not suffer now, for the effects of this vice come on so slowly that the victim is often very near death before you realize that he has done himself harm. It is worthy of note that many eminent physicians now advocate the custom of circumcision..."(Mary R. Melendy, MD, The Ideal Woman - For Maidens, Wives and Mothers, 1903.)(The above material is quoted from J. Bigelow, The Joy of Uncircumcising, Hourglass Book Publishing, Aptos, CA, USA. Thanks to Robin Verner.)

In America, foreskins were not rare at the time circumcision was introduced into widespread practice. Paradoxically, then, the understanding of the intact male organ at that time was somewhat greater than it is today. (In particular, it never would have been possible to promote circumcision on the basis that it was "necessary for hygienic reasons"---this came later, when doctors themselves were mostly circumcised men.)

I think that's common... in my experience it's actually women who feel most strongly in favor of circumcision. When my boys were born I didn't really care either way that much (sorry, I don't think it's as horrific as some here do, and neither do I think it's hugely beneficial or important), but my wife was quite insistent that they be circumcised. She didn't really have any argument other than "uncircumcised penises look funny". Oh, she also cited hygiene, but the "look funny" argument seemed to be the more important one.

I've come across the same attitude from nearly every other American woman with whom I've discussed the topic -- which isn't a huge number, penis alteration not being a common lunch conversation topic and all -- but probably a couple dozen or so.

Basically, they took a control group of intact men, and turned them loose on some whorehouses, all expenses paid. And they went wild. Started reporting AIDS and what-have-you from day one.

So, ok, they had their experiment group. Now, since they had just had a surgery performed, they were ordered to a week of bedrest.

Now it gets real interesting what happens when they turn the experiment group loose on the whorehouse. They start reporting AIDS from day one. That's not all. After two weeks, their rate of infection begins approaching the control group's rate of infection.

WHOOOPS! END STUDY! ABORT! ABORT!

So, now we have a published study that PROVES that fewer men in the experiment (fewer, by head count) had AIDS than in the control group. MALE GENITAL MUTILATION CURES AIDS.

I hope I adequately answered your suspicitions. Clearly, circumcision is a cure for AIDS. *sigh* and Gah!

As a man that suffers from sever penile insensitivity, presumably from my circumcision (which became infected due to poor practices at the hospital), I believe it is a useless, barbaric practice, almost akin to clitordectomies. Clitordectomies, by the way, are also known as female circumcisions. Coincidence?
If you want some of the truth about what a circumcision actually does I suggest reading the following:http://www.norm.org/ [norm.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreskin_restoration [wikipedia.org]

Mod this gentleman UP please people.I too have damaged genetalia due to a circumcision that I didn't want, had no say in and didn't need, fortunately the damage isn't too severe in my case. (turkey neck)

Please take a look at this, it's not for the squeemish, nor is it work safe.http://www.circumstitions.com/Complic.html [circumstitions.com]That is a rare occurance just like myself and wbr1, however NONE of them needed to fucking well occur in the first place.

Oh and can I just say, politically correct or not - women do not have any say in this topic of discussion, NONE, NADA, their opinion is utterly worthless on this topic - be it for or against. I've seen too many articles on this topic with facebook or twitter posts by women who think they have a right to comment on it.The one I saw yesterday which got me fired up by a woman "your son, your decision" ugh.

I'm forfeiting a mod point for this, sorry to whoever I modded up... The actual abstract of the actual paper backing up this claim (BOLD IS MINE):

ABSTRACT. Existing scientific evidence demonstrates potential medical benefits of newborn male circumcision; however, these data are not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcision. In circumstances in which there are potential benefits and risks, yet the procedure is not essential to the child’s current well-being, parents should determine what is in the best interest of the child. To make an informed choice, parents of all male infants should be given accurate and unbiased information and be provided the opportunity to discuss this decision. If a decision for circumcision is made, procedural analgesia should be provided.

IOW, no, we're not recommending anything, we're simply saying there are POTENTIAL medical benefits. Well there are potential medical benefits to getting my appendix removed, or my tonsils cut out, it doesn't mean I should be forced to make that decision.

Stupid journalists, we need to seriously trim the fat in that industry and start with these jackasses who misrepresent science for political gain.

I was in physical pain for roughly 10 years from when my male puberty started (yay, facial hair, oddly I never got crackly voice) and when my female puberty started (yay, boobs, goodbye morning wood).

When I started HRT, I didn't even know I was circumcised. I thought pain along with wood was the normal thing for a guy. Apparently, my doctor didn't think twice about my reporting feelings that I should have been a different gender with different body parts and experiencing pain at the normal functioning of the male genitalia. It wasn't until I met my intact ex-boyfriend that I learned I had been mutilated. It turns out that the feelings I experience of the skin tearing were abnormal, even for a circumcised man.

Also, no trans woman I've ever asked has once reported the same pain I reported. Therefore, eliminate my doctor's theory that the pain was caused by some mysterious brain-genital mismatch.

The question that digs at me is this: was my doctor right in dismissing circumcision as a cause or am I right in blaming circumcision as the cause? Because of all the disinformation surrounding male genital mutilation, my doctor may not have been aware of a case presented in The Joy of Uncircumcising by Jim Bigelow (an intereting read regardless of standpoint) worse than mine. Instead of just pain because the skin felt like it might tear, there's a story of a man whose skin DID tear, every night.

At any rate, because I can never return to my natural, unmutilated state, I'll never know. And, if I may since this is slashdot, since estrogen HRT solved my problem, the worst part, being a geek, is not knowing lol.

Take a group of menCircumcize some of them. Those circumcized can't do anything much sexually for a few weeks, maybe longerObserve that circumcision lowers STDsPat yourself on the back, and go maim a few hundred thousands kids. Don't forget to bill them for it.

I decided STDs weren't likely to be a significant threat to my infant son. If he wants to have part of himself chopped off when he turns sixteen, I'll give him all the info and support his choice. I think I can predict how it'll turn out, but I'm not kidding--I'll drive him to the hospital myself.

(And before anyone starts, the entire rest of the pro-circumcision argument revolves around an additional 9-per-thousand UTI infection rate. Yawn.)

1) The AAP omitted the fact that the foreskin is an important part of male anatomy with specific sexual, sensory, and protective functions. How can the AAP possibly recommend removing part of the body when they won't even discuss its functions? (Google functions of the foreskin)

2) The AAP failed to address the ethical problems with amputating healthy tissue from a child without that child's consent. Doing so without absolute medical necessity is a violation of the child's basic human right to an intact body and the right to choose for himself when he is an adult.

3) HIV prevention is not a valid reason for circumcising an infant who is not sexually active. HIV is easily prevented in other, less invasive ways. Other modern nations are not endorsing circumcision as an HIV prevention method. To learn more see this handout from Intact America. Also, a recent study from Puerto Rico shows that circumcised men in that area have higher rates of HIV and other STDs than intact men.

4) The AAP cannot credibly say the benefits outweigh the risks since they don't have good data on what the risks are. Few good studies have been done on the risks of circumcision, and no state or national system exists for collecting adverse event reports. Further, very little data is available on long-term complications. Without solid data on the risks and long-term complications of circumcision, any conclusion which weighs benefits vs. risks, or benefits vs. cost, is fundamentally flawed.

5) The AAP is out of step with the statements from other countries. Other nations are moving away from newborn circumcision, even to the point of considering bans on newborn circumcision in some areas, but the AAP is moving in the opposite direction. This shows just now biased the AAP has become and that they are really just trying to justify an outdated practice rather than view the situation objectively. I hope that the AAP comes under international pressure to retract this new statement, as occurred with their ill-conceived female genital cutting statement a few years ago.

I am a parent. Holding my newborn daughter in the hospital room, singing to her some of the songs we had played for her when she was in my wife's belly, trying unsuccessfully to choke back the tears of joy and amazement as I gazed into her eyes -- it was without a doubt the most amazing experience of my life. The idea of subjecting that beautiful, fragile, and innocent baby to the kind of trauma and pain that circumcision entails is something I could never dream of doing. Honestly, I'd rather walk into traffic or jump off a building.

And that's not even touching the logical arguments against circumcision, which are pretty much airtight.

The rate of HPV assisted Penile Cancer in the US among the various demographics of men ranges from.4 per 100,000 for Asian / Pacific Islander to.8 per 100,000 white males, up to 1.3 per 100,000 for Hispanic males. If that's your justification for circumcision (and it's totally fine if it is) you're taking some strong proactive steps against a fairly slight risk.

Per year, 1570 *cases* are diagnosed, and roughly 310 men die of penile cancer. You quite literally have a 99.9999% chance of never being diagnosed with penile cancer.

So, aside from the cancer part, the overall message re: Penis isn't much different from owning a gun "Take care of it, keep it clean, and use it safely." (also, don't point it at your eye, it might go off.) It hurts me a bit to see people running around like Thomas Dolby with Echolalia yelling "SCIENCE!" in every instance of X > Y. You're right, the numbers certainly side with science. But the data provided also says that, in the Western world where things like soap and running water aren't privileges, you're pretty much (as in 99%+) OK either way, at least until the boy hits an age where a responsible parent can instill care and handling procedures to prevent later issues like STD's.

(as an aside, there is at least the smallest shred of financial incentive for Doctors to perform circumcisions in the US, but that isn't part of a grand "strip 'em and clip 'em" conspiracy, it's a fundamental flaw in the system. Somewhere along the line it was determined that insurance will pay for it, ergo it gets done. My 84 year old grandmother with cmphysema and congestive heart failure was put on Lipitor the last time she was admitted. Her cholesterol wasn't the problem, Smoking for 70+ years was. As the Doctor bluntly put it, the main reason was "Medicare will pay for it." There was was slight medical benefit. But, for the most part, it was a money move. If you try and break that cycle, though, people start screaming about "Death Panels." Sigh....)

This isn't in the same ballpark as say, not getting your kids a whooping cough vaccine. So help me if I find those fuckers at daycare who sent their little outbreak monkeys in....

Everybody knows that nails get dirty. So instead of educating my kids to wash their hands before they eat, I nail-circumcised their nails when they were born. That way, no more diseases. And you know, 10 years later, they feel OK with that. They never remember having nails. And they didn't get a disease at all. Proof!

Some naysayers mention that the kids on the other side of the fence did get some disease one day, even though they are nail nail-circumcised. That's because their parents let them play everywhere. They should practice playground-abstinence like my kids, and put on their preservahand gloves when they go to school.

Doctors pay dues to the AAP, not babies. Doctors make money off of cutting babies. You joke, but it is a HUGE industry - not just the operation, but afterwards the tissue is sold to make cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

You may be physically healthier, on average, without your foreskin. Only if you're not taught about how to properly take care of it. (So the data, framed in this way, will say that circumcised boys are healthier because improperly cared for un-circumcised boys)

The real problem is a social phobia about teaching little boys how they are supposed to wash and care for their penis. Instead, we just cut off the foreskin so we don't have to deal with it. Touching your "penis" is bad, after all.

Later in life it leads to abnormal masturbation, reduced sexual pleasure, and reduced pleasure of your female partner. - This study conveniently ignores these issues because they're not about children.

The article is also very light on numbers. It mentions a reduction in STIs and whatnot, but provides absolutely no quantitative data. How much are these infections and disorders decreased by? Are we talking a couple percentage points? Or dozens of percentage points? Furthermore, I don't see any definitive causes described. What I see is a correlation with some hypothesizing as to the cause but nothing which has actually been verified by scientific inquiry.

Not to mention correlation does not equal causation so we have no idea if the men they chose had other factors that weren't considered.

Hell the wiki on correlation has a medical study that said women that take birth control were at less risk for heart disease but a further study showed those women actually had a HIGHER risk but since they were from a higher socioeconomic group than the women without birth control it was the much better diet and exercise habits that skewed the results.So I'd say before we can give an answer either way further more controlled studies should be done.

And finally I have to wonder how much of the problem isn't western taboos about talking to kids about their genitals. Lets face it like any other part of the body children need to be taught to clean the area correctly and thoroughly but we here in the west are so hung on the idea that little John or Jane may actually play with themselves I seriously doubt any of the kids were being givern a proper education in such matters.

The real problem is a social phobia about teaching little boys how they are supposed to wash and care for their penis. Instead, we just cut off the foreskin so we don't have to deal with it. Touching your "penis" is bad, after all.

Later in life it leads to abnormal masturbation, reduced sexual pleasure, and reduced pleasure of your female partner. - This study conveniently ignores these issues because they're not about children.

From TFA:

Perhaps the most powerful evidence in favour of circumcision comes from randomized controlled trials in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. These found that, for men who have sex with women, circumcision reduced the risk of infection with HIV. (No protection was observed for men who have sex with men.) The South African and Ugandan trials also found that circumcision reduced infection rates for human papillomavirus (HPV) and herpes. The World Health Organization has already made circumcision part of its HIV-prevention strategy in sub-Saharan Africa, with a goal to circumcise 20 million men by 2015.

The AAP found that, in addition to preventing sexually transmitted infections, circumcision could reduce the rates of urinary tract infections and penile cancer, probably because the foreskin harbours infectious microbes as well as the immune cells targeted by HIV.... The task force also found no strong evidence that circumcised babies grew up with more urinary difficulties or sexual problems.

So... yeah. Reduced infection rates in children and adults, and no strong evidence of sexual problems at all. It doesn't matter if you could stop infection through education on how to properly clean the penis. Hell, HIV could be stopped dead in a few generations if people stopped having sex with multiple partners and/or used condoms. But guess what? The world doesn't work like that, and a measure that can help prevent disease with very few side effects can and should be used to help stop disease. Hence, the recommendation.

The world doesn't work like that, and a measure that can help prevent disease with very few side effects can and should be used to help stop disease.

Wow, nice. So because people act foolishly, everyone (that doesn't approve of it) must suffer? Please. The people dealing with HIV are usually dealing with the consequences of their own actions, but if we remove all foreskins, we punish everyone for their actions. Furthermore, plenty of people without foreskins do have HIV. A small increase in the chance of getting HIV/penile cancer is not worth punishing everyone over.

Three studies in Africa several years ago that claimed that circumcision prevented AIDS and that circumcision was as effective as a 60% effective vaccine (Auvert 2005, 2006). These studies had many flaws, including that they were stopped before all the results came in. There have also been several studies that show that circumcision does not prevent HIV (Connolly 2008). There are many issues at play in the spread of STDs which make it very hard to generalize results from one population to another.

In Africa, where the recent studies have been done, most HIV transmission is through male-female sex, but in the USA, it is mainly transmitted through blood exposure (like needle sharing) and male-male sex. Male circumcision does not protect women from acquiring HIV, nor does it protect men who have sex with men (Wawer 2009, Jameson 2009).

What's worse, because of the publicity surrounding the African studies, men in Africa are now starting to believe that if they are circumcised, they do not need to wear condoms, which will increase the spread of HIV (Westercamp 2010). Even in the study with the most favorable effects of circumcision, the protective effect was only 60% - men would still have to wear condoms to protect themselves and their partners from HIV.

In the USA, during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s, about 85% of adult men were circumcised (much higher rates of circumcision than in Africa), and yet HIV still spread.

It is important to understand, too, that the men in the African studies were adults and they volunteered for circumcision. Babies undergoing circumcision were not given the choice to decide for themselves.

In fact good sex ed works: Europe has lower HIV infection rates than the US.

This whole thing is basically "genital mutilation of children is fine because we can cut on education". Amusing fact: female circumcision will similarly risk rates. Will you support it?

The benefits are tiny (and only for adults), and the risks significant (for the kids). Also, what about the right of children to bodily integrity? If an adult wants to be circumcised, this is fine, of course, but this decision, so soon on the back of the German court decision? That reeks of religious lobbying.

Uh, washing anyone? Those of you without foreskins seem to be desperately defending circumcision to justify the decision your parents or their pediatrician made, but the foreskin is just a bit of skin. It is not some impenetrable barrier! It's like saying, I can't get at my teeth to clean them so i must have my lips surgically removed. Jeez, some of you smart people are devilish stupid at times. Glad my kids still have their foreskins. They are whole and unscarred and know how to clean themselves. How about you? When did you last have a shower?

If I remove my breasts myself, it's an elective choice and perfectly legal. If it's done by somebody who holds me down and carves up my breasts with a knife, the law calls it "mutilation" because it was an involuntary act.

We should not be cutting off little boy's penis tips or little girl's breast buds, and I don't care if doing so would prevent penile cancer or breast cancer. The decision should wait until they are old enough to make the decision as legal adults.

The British Medical Association said it had no policy on the issue because of the “absence of unambiguously clear and consistent medical data on the implications of the intervention."

As far as I'm concerned if the evidence is so ambiguous after all this time then there's no necessity for the operation. Look at it this way if it prevents the spread of HIV then why is the infection level in the UK a third of that in the US in percentage terms yet circumcision in the UK is very tiny.

Which studies? Proponents of circumcision continuously invent a new reason circumcision is useful whenever the previous one is debunked. First it was to fight masturbation, then it was because it prevented penile cancer, then it was to prevent genital cancer among women, then it was because men would be too stupid to clean themselves if they were uncut, then it was to protect against AIDS. What will be the next reason, who knows but I'm sure they will invent one then say "prove me wrong".

There is fair evidence that men circumcised as adults demonstrate a
higher threshold for light touch sensitivity with a static mono
lament compared with uncircumcised men;
these ndings failed to attain statistical
signicance for most locations on the
penis, however, and it is unclear that
sensitivity to static monolament (as
opposed to dynamic stimulus) has any
relevance to sexual satisfaction.

And what does the actual article marked as source for this say:

The glans of the circumcised penis is less
sensitive to fine touch than the glans of the
uncircumcised penis. The transitional region
from the external to the internal prepuce
is the most sensitive region of the
uncircumcised penis and more sensitive than
the most sensitive region of the circumcised
penis. Circumcision ablates the most sensitive
parts of the penis..

I've never read 'an article' that as blatantly cherrypicks things supporting their view...

You mean the same “studies” that called the spleen or even the tonsils “useless” for decades, just because they didn't know the use? Until they realized that the spleen is the standing army (!) of the immune system. (And the tonsils are your front entry guards.)The place where white blood cells reside, that learned to defend your body against past threats.Yeeeah, totally useless. Let's remove it. We're totally not arrogant dicks with a god complex for acting like that...

Hell, how stupid do you have to be, to not see that obviously, there’s a reason we have the foreskin, since otherwise those without it would have long won natural selection.

All the arguments here are complete bullshit.

The "disease hazard" one: How the hell is it expecting to much, to pull back your foreskin and wash your dick once, every 1-2 days?? How is that a disease hazard and a justification in the first place?? And how, going by that logic, don't they also recommend removing your asshole, bowels, mouth and nose? Those are even more prone to be full of bad germs.

The uselessness one: I guess you never had one, and weren’t even given a choice to experience it. Because otherwise you'd know, that at least 1. it keep the glans lightly humid... which is its natural healthy state, and 2. protects it.It's the same thing as a vagina, which also has a special humid fauna/climate as the normal state. Hell, it even is the same damn fucking tissue! What's so hard about this??

What kind of fucked up mind do you have to have, to go: "Well, considering it's a integral part of your body, evolved over millions of years, it clearly must be completely useless."?

So shut the fuck up with your blatant thought-terminating chlichees, if you can't even bring up actual arguments! Only idiots life FOX news pound on "facts" and "fair and balanced". Because he has no fucking idea of the difference between a observation, a hypothesis, a theory, and communication of bullshit.

I wish your whole damn backwards wasteland would just go ahead, and cut the Internet, so you can live your dream of The Dark Ages 2.0!

A very large recent study in Europe found 1/10 having short term complications with circumcision and 1/1000 having suffering serious permanent problems. 1/1000 is not large enough to forbid adults from getting it if they want to, but it is large enough that it has been forbidden on children in Germany and under evaluation for being forbidden in several other countries.

>>>my circumcised penis has been greeted with relief by a partner who found the natural look repulsive.

Interesting. If my "partner" said that my natural penis was repulsive, I would tell her that I'll circumcize my dick if she trims those ugly lips off her pussy (female circumcision). Fucking bitch. If the penis didn't need a foreskin, evolution would not have put it there.

For that matter why does God make his followers cut it off? Did God make a mistake when he put the foreskin on the male? Hmmm. But he's supposed to be flawless.

Three studies in Africa several years ago that claimed that circumcision prevented AIDS and that circumcision was as effective as a 60% effective vaccine (Auvert 2005, 2006). These studies had many flaws, including that they were stopped before all the results came in.

It does have the same "benefits". There were observational studies in African countries of female circumcision just like the ones of male circumcision, and they found that female circumcision caused roughly the same reduction in HIV infection amongst women as male circumcision did amongst men. It's just that the researchers chose to assume that reduction was due to confounding factors and should be ignored rather than charging in and launching a badly-conducted RCT. There was no reason to conclude that confounding factors were any more likely for female than male circumcision, except distaste for one that didn't apply to the other.

Penile cancer rates are not zero among circumcised and it's such a none issue as it's also incredibly rare among the un-circumcised too. The recent HIV studies are very poor, and quite frankly, bad science (the circed men were given condoms and extra counciling the others did not, and the study was cut short, thus skewing the data as there was a good period where the circed men had to heal up before engaging in sexual activity).

Yep, one problem with the major African studies was the variation in follow-up support given. Another problem is the difficultly of doing randomized trials (anyone who can be convinced to have his penis surgically modified can probably also be convinced to follow your safe-sex directions.) Thirdly, double-blind trials concerning STDs are a little difficult to do when circumcision is visible to all.

The US studies have similar problems: when a circumcision has an average cost of around $350, the parents opting for the child's surgery tend to be richer and more able/willing to spend on health care for the child. You would expect circumcision to be correlated with benefits to every treatable medical condition.

Unless I'm entirely mistaken, the specific studies in question are the African studies which your links rely on as proof that circumcision reduces HIV infection. (All three studies were conducted by the same group over the same time period and use the same methodology; I suspect that if they didn't get good enough results they were planning to pool them in one study.) The circumcised men were instructed not to have sex for the first two months of the 12-month study period whereas the control group were allowed to; in addition, because all men were given free condoms and advice on safer sex at every visit but the circumcised men had more follow-up visits the circumcised group had better access to both condoms and advice.

The APA article your links bases their claims on [jamanetwork.com] is also misleading in other ways. For example, the 3 randomised trials were not exactly " consistent with previous ecological and observational studies in Africa, Europe, and the United States" - as I recall the observational studies showed much larger benefits (and in fact the more robust the studies are, the smaller the effect seems to be). The Ugandan trial also couldn't actually show that "the protective effect of circumcision increased with longer time from surgery" as they claim because there was no control group after 12 months and therefore not a sliver of evidence that the decrease in HIV infection rates over time had anything to do with circumcision whatsoever; while didn't stop the researchers from claiming it as a benefit from circumcision and even extrapolating the decrease out into the distant future and prominently quoting the extrapolated figures in their abstract, they had no basis for those claims whatsoever.

Also, the bit about "Male circumcision and HIV protection among MSM have not been studied as well as heterosexual transmission" is weasel-worded bullshit - we've studied this to death even after study after study showed no benefit, and subsequent studies have still shown no benefit. The lack of evidence for it working has nothing to do with lack of research - we've researched it plenty and it just doesn't work. Furthermore, notice how they dismiss all the studies showing that circumcision doesn't affect the risk of men transmitting HIV to their female partners and cherry-pick some that do; in practice things may be even worse because studies that were showing early signs of concluding that it actually increased the risk to female partners have been terminated early for getting undesirable results!

Mutilation of children's bodies is generally considered to be harmful, yes.

When you're talking about physically cutting into a baby's body, the burden of proof lies with those who would cut, not those who would not. Quoting from an above post:

The British Medical Association said it had no policy on the issue because of the “absence of unambiguously clear and consistent medical data on the implications of the intervention."

As far as I'm concerned if the evidence is so ambiguous after all this time then there's no necessity for the operation. Look at it this way if it prevents the spread of HIV then why is the infection level in the UK a third of that in the US in percentage terms yet circumcision in the UK is very tiny

In the UK, there is no financial incentive for doctors to mutilate children. I tend to trust their version of affairs, rather than those with a financial incentive (the doctor is paid for his time, and the hospital sells the tissue).

Just because there isn't a proven causal relationship, doesn't mean that there isn't one.

More to the point... has circumcision ever been shown to be linked to something harmful?

Yes.

Circumcision is an unnecessary and mainly cosmetic surgery picked by parents because of tradition and/or religion. Recent attempts to find medical justification for its existence are both new and almost laughable. It's a penile "nose job" for a baby so the baby isn't potentially made fun of for being "different" later on.

Unfortunately, circumcision is a surgical procedure. And no matter how "routine" and "minor" a surgical procedure is, it's only "routine" and "minor" until something inevitably goes wrong [go.com]. Rare, but horrible when it happens.

Promoting circumcisions to prevent STD transmission is the worst sort of self-serving justification. Why not promote mastectomies at puberty for girls to avoid the 1 in 7 chance of getting breast cancer during their lifetime? Or appendectomies for everyone? If your STD prevention strategy consists of promoting circumcision, instead of promoting safe sex education and prophylactic barrier distribution, your priorities are wildly skewed.

You really want your baby circumcised? Wait until he's 18, and give him the choice.

The "less AIDS argument" actually holds up in third world countries where there is no access to health care, less hygienic practices, and less education.

It doesn't hold up here in America. There may be like 1-5 cases of the extra foreskin actually causing HIV to be contracted when without it the virus didn't contract - there may be none at all. In all seriousness, the studies cited were not done in the developed world.

a) The chances of your circumcision being botched leaving serious, permanent dysfunction are higher than the reduction in AIDS risk.

b) Your risk of AIDS is highly lifestyle dependent. The western world isn't Uganda, most people simply aren't at risk. Why can't people who chose risky lifestyles also choose to be circumcised, as adults? Why do we presume all babies are guilty...?

c) All the medical studies in favor of circumcision are written by people who make money from it. The only study you need is the observation that Europe isn't some aids infested den of rotting, cancerous dicks.

d) Masturbation with/without foreskin? Foreskin is best, no contest. Modern circumcision was actually started by the anti-masturbation movements in the 1900s to remove the pleasure from wanking (headed by Doctor Kellogg no less - the guy who invented cornflakes). Think about that before chopping.

- I would rather have the penis I was born with, which would now include not a 'small ribbon' but an area of skin with the approximate surface area of an index card- There are far less invasive treatments for penile cancer than the removal of the entire penis

But... becoming a girl because you have cancer and lose your penis? Are you for real? It's funny you mention that though, because there's a notable case where circumcision itself did destroy the penis of an infant, and in attempt to fix things they performed gender reassignment surgery (though doomed sexually for life), put the kid on hormones and raised him as a girl. Problem was, he never identified as a girl, and some decades after learning the truth about what happened to him, killed himself.

But yep, the science behind the procedure is bulletproof. Except when it isn't.

And to your assertion of cognitive dissonance, I have not experienced this. To the contrary I have found that people will go to any length to convince themselves that they have not been harmed when it's very obvious they have.

1. The AAP chose to overblow purported benefits by cherry-picking studies and advertising their results past their proportionality, misleading the public with doublespeak of "pro" while admitting circumcision still does not qualify as routine amputation.

2. The AAP omitted both contradicting studies and objections to those it used, such as to the three WHO HIV studies.

3. The AAP omitted any discussion of the foreskin's functionality and notice of possible complications after circumcision (incl. death, an estimated 117 boys in the US per year).